Harry Who? Winnie the Pooh is This Week’s Must-See Film!

Passing by all of the advertisements for “bad teachers,” vampires, and “horrible bosses,” the kids settled into the velour seats at the theater and saw the delightful new movie, “Winnie the Pooh.”

Eeyore has lost his tail, and Pooh is very hungry.

That’s the entire plot that charmingly inhabits the 73 minutes long movie (including the opening and credits). But if you can get over paying $10 a ticket for sixty-nine minutes, you will enjoy this throw-back of a film.

A.A. Milne’s classic characters seem hand-drawn, simple – there’s no Pixar modern graphics in the Hundred Acre Wood. And the stuffed characters are so generous spirited, you can’t help but leave the theater with a bit more joy that you came in with.

The film is enhanced by Zooey Deschanel’s new indie-sounding songs and the narration of John Cleese. While I sat there, I marveled that the same man who gave voice to Pooh when I was a child was still performing. However, I later realized that Jim Cummings had seamlessly begun filling in for the original voice of the late Sterling Holloway.

Also, it’s nice to see how prominently the movie features the written word, as if each scene were being read from a book. In fact, at one point, the letters themselves show up for Winnie to help him save the day.

Take the kids — if you have young ones, especially. (My ten year old son and I had a deal that if he ran into his friends he could pretend to be going to see Harry Potter.) And stay for the credits, which so sweetly demonstrate the magic kids can pull off with stuffed animals, some books, and a lot of imagination.